Everything Under the Sky (43 page)

“Bells?”

“Yes, Da Teh, bells, magic bells made of bronze that can produce different tones: One is low when struck in the middle, and the other is high when struck on the edge. They're very complex to play and no longer used but are among our oldest musical instruments.”

“How is it possible I've never heard of these bells before?” Lao Jiang wondered.

“Perhaps because there are only a few left in a few monasteries, and we'd know nothing of their existence if it weren't for the annotated scores in some libraries that reveal their great age. Also, they're not normal bells like the ones you're used to seeing. These are flatter. They almost look as if a rock fell on them.”

“Very well,” Lao Jiang said. “Let's go find these bells.”

We walked along the walls for a while and finally found a trapdoor, some three hundred feet behind the last walkway.

“More descents?” I asked.

“So it would seem,” Lao Jiang replied, holding on to the ring and hauling up on it. The door opened with ease, as had the others on previous levels, and we once again discovered those ubiquitous iron rungs attached to the wall as a sort of ladder. We climbed down, plunging into darkness, but thankfully it didn't take long. Lao Jiang went first and soon advised us he'd reached the bottom. Master Red came last, and by the time he put his foot on the ground, the antiquarian had already taken out his lovely silver lighter and lit his methane torch (the very word “methane” now made my stomach turn). Indeed, there were the Bian Zhong, imposing, impressive, hanging in front of us on a beautiful bronze frame that took up the entire back wall, from floor to ceiling and one side to the other. It was filled with those strange, squashed bells, a veritable plethora: six rows, to be exact, and I counted eleven in each row. The bells got bigger as you went from left to right, the small ones on the left being the size of a water glass and the huge ones on the right that could have been stood on end and used as trash cans.

Their undulating designs in gold still shone in the light of Lao Jiang's torch. We later discovered they also had designs in silver, but these had tarnished and didn't stand out as much. They looked like purses on display in a store window, the lovely pointed bottom corners making them even more fashionable. The handles hung from hooks spaced regularly along the six thick bars that stretched from one end to the other of that colossal frame covered in verdigris. In front of this beautiful Bian Zhong, which is what the full carillon was also called, was a little table and two hammers made of the same metal. Each hammer was at least two feet long and was undoubtedly used to strike those squashed bells.

“Is there a particular piece of music we have to play?” I asked somewhat sarcastically.

Master Red, with his usual penchant for analysis and concentration, was walking over to the Bian Zhong to examine it carefully, and since he needed light, he motioned for Lao Jiang to follow. The antiquarian, however, had found whale-oil receptacles on the walls and was in the process of lighting them so he could extinguish his torch. As soon as the room was illuminated, Master Red concentrated on the bells. Lao Jiang and I approached the frame to take a look as well, even though I wouldn't be much help. The bells were truly beautiful, with small raised knobs on the upper part and decorated with floating clouds, made of gold, down below. Both the top edge and the pointed bottom were trimmed in silver, similar to a frieze but with the spiral, flowing shape so particular to Chinese design.

“Here are the Five Elements,” Master Red announced, placing a hooked finger on the middle of the bell that was right in front of him. I moved closer and saw that he was pointing to a Chinese ideogram inside an oval between the knobs and the clouds. It looked like a little man with his arms open wide. “This is the character for Fire, and this,” he said, putting his index finger on the bell next to it, “is Metal. On this one you can see the element Earth, Wood is here, and Water is here.”

I glanced at the Bian Zhong as a whole and said, “I hate to discourage you, Master Red Jade, but every one of these bells contains one of those five ideograms.”

The character for Water was quite similar to the one for Fire, except the little man had three arms, two of them on the right. Earth looked like an upside-down letter
t,
Wood was a cross with three legs, and the ideogram for Metal could easily have passed for the drawing of a cute house with a gabled roof. That was most certainly my favorite character.

“I'm afraid this puzzle is going to be rather difficult to solve,” Master Red lamented, glancing at the long hammers lying on the table. “First we have to figure out what we need to do: discover a musical sequence using the ideograms for the Five Elements?”

“Why don't we begin by striking those five bells in the middle and see what happens? Then we can try all the ones with the same character and continue with different combinations until something works.”

Both men looked at me as if I'd gone crazy.

“Do you know how much noise these Bian Zhong make, Elvira?” Lao Jiang roared.

“What does that have to do with it?” I objected. “Isn't that why these hammers are here? How do you expect us to get to the fifth level if we don't uncover this musical score?”

“We'd better think,” Master Red said, gathering his tunic and sitting on the floor in a meditative pose.

“Can't I at least try?” I insisted defiantly, picking up the hammers.

“Do what you like,” Lao Jiang replied, covering his ears with his hands and moving closer to continue examining the bells.

That's what I wanted to hear. Without a second thought, I dove into the thrilling interpretive experience of striking (carefully, that is) sixty-six ancient bells in every order and way I could think of. They had a lovely sound, slightly muffled, as if you'd set a hand on them to stifle the vibration but they somehow continued to pulse. It was a very Chinese sound, quite unlike what I was used to but undeniably beautiful. Suddenly I felt a hand on my shoulder.

“Yes?” I asked in surprise, turning to find Lao Jiang.

“Stop, please. I beg you.”

“Does the sound bother you?”

Master Red, who was still sitting on the floor, let out a spontaneous and completely uncharacteristic guffaw.

“It's unbearable, Elvira. Please stop.”

Some things never change. When I was a girl, before I began studying those hateful scales, I used to love to bang away on the piano until I was pulled off the stool and punished. The same thing had just occurred over thirty years later, and in China of all places. It seemed to be my tragic destiny.

I set the hammers on the table and prepared to while away the time until Master Red came up with some brilliant idea that would enlighten us as to what we should do with those lovely bells. I pulled a ball of rice out of my bag and began to eat it. It was dry. A cup of hot tea would have done me a world of good, but at least the rice was appeasing my stomach. I decided to entertain myself by counting the bells while I ate. There were only five Bian Zhong with the ideogram for Metal, the little house, and there were nine with Earth, thirteen with Fire, seventeen with Wood, and twenty-two with Water. Biao would surely have found some numerical relationship among those numbers if he'd been there. It actually wasn't all that difficult: The sequence worked almost perfectly if you added four to the previous number. That is, if there were five little houses, five plus four meant nine bells with the ideogram for Earth. If you added four to the nine Earths, you got thirteen Fires. Thirteen Fires plus four equaled seventeen Woods. It stopped working with Water, however, because according to the sequence there should have been twenty-one bells with the character for Water, but there were twenty-two. There was one too many, and precisely of Water, Shi Huang Ti's ruling element and the one that had more bells than any other. Water was the most plentiful in that Bian Zhong, followed in descending order by Wood, Fire, Earth, and Metal. What had that master in Wudang said about the Five Elements? I vaguely recalled something about their being different manifestations of chi energy, that they were all related to one another and to other things like heat and cold, colors, shapes…. Oh, why had I left my sketchbook with the children? I tried to call up a visual memory, not of what that master in Wudang had said but of what I'd drawn. What sorts of notes had I taken using various animals? Ah, yes, I remembered: I'd sketched the four cardinal points with a black tortoise in the north representing Water, a red crow in the south that was Fire, a green dragon in the east for Wood, a white tiger in the west symbolizing Metal, and a yellow snake in the middle for the element Earth.

But none of that did me any good. There was still too much Water in that huge carillon that must have weighed several tons. I walked away to sit on the floor next to Master Red. Lao Jiang followed me.

“Well, Master Red Jade?” the antiquarian inquired.

“It could be some sort of musical composition based on either the creative or destructive cycles of the Elements.”

Lao Jiang nodded his head. I didn't remember ever having heard anything about those two cycles, although maybe I had and just forgot.

“What cycles are those, Master Red Jade?” I asked.

“The Five Elements are closely related to one another, madame,” he explained. “Their interaction can be either creative or destructive. If it's creative, Metal is nourished by Earth, Earth is nourished by Fire, Fire is nourished by Wood, Wood is nourished by Water, and Water is nourished by Metal, ending the cycle. If, on the other hand, their interaction is destructive, Metal is destroyed by Fire, Fire is destroyed by Water, Water is destroyed by Earth, Earth is destroyed by Wood, and Wood is destroyed by Metal.”

A distant Bian Zhong rang in my head when I heard that string of elements mutually nourishing and destroying one another.

“Could you please repeat the first cycle, the creative one?” I asked Master Red.

He looked at me strangely but nodded. “Metal is nourished by Earth, Earth is nourished by Fire, Fire is nourished by Wood, Wood is nourished by Water, and Water is nourished by Metal.”

“Do you start with Metal for any particular reason, or could you start with any of the other elements?”

“Well, that's the way I learned it and they way it usually appears in the ancient texts, but if you like I could give you the cycle starting with whichever element you want.”

“No, that's not necessary. Thank you. Could you repeat it all one more time?”

“Again?” Lao Jiang cringed.

“Of course, madame,” Master Red kindly agreed. “Metal is nourished by Earth …”

Five bells with the ideogram for Metal; five plus four, nine bells with the ideogram for Earth.

“… Earth is nourished by Fire …”

Nine bells with the ideogram for Earth; nine plus four, thirteen bells with the ideogram for Fire.

“… Fire is nourished by Wood …”

Thirteen bells with the ideogram for Fire; thirteen plus four, seventeen bells with the ideogram for Wood.

“… Wood is nourished by Water …”

Seventeen bells with the ideogram for Wood, and here's where my addition fell apart, because seventeen plus four was twenty-one, but I had twenty-two bells with the ideogram for Water.

“… and Water is nourished by Metal, thus closing the circle to begin again. Why are you so interested in the creative cycle of the Five Elements?”

I told them about the increasing number of bells according to the creative cycle and that there was one bell too many with Water, though I didn't know why.

Master Red Jade became very pensive. “The creative cycle …” he finally repeated in a whisper.

“Yes, the creative cycle,” I confirmed. “What about it?”

“Nourishment, madame, a substance that invigorates and strengthens, one element feeding the next so that it can become stronger and more powerful, and can in turn feed the next, and it another, and so on until it comes back to the point of origin. There's something you didn't notice. Suppose this bell with the element Water isn't actually one too many but is the beginning, the origin of this chain of elements that reinforce one another. We would thus start with a bell that has the element Water, adding four each time as you discovered. What would we get? Five bells with the element Metal, the ones you put first, and in this way the twenty-one Bian Zhong that were a nuisance when they were twenty-two would fit perfectly. So what do we have? We have a creative design between the Five Elements that begins and ends with Water, the First Emperor's foundation and his emblem.”

“But what does all this have to do with the bells?” Lao Jiang asked, bewildered.

“I still don't know, Da Teh,” Master Red replied, standing and walking over to the Bian Zhong, “but it's not a coincidence. We've likely discovered the musical score even if we don't know how to play it.”

The antiquarian and I followed and stood by his side in front of the huge bronze frame, but I didn't see anything. I couldn't imagine how to take that creative cycle to those sixty-six bells with gold and silver designs hanging quietly from their elegant handles.

“Shall we begin by striking the largest Water bell?” I ventured.

“Let's try,” Lao Jiang agreed this time, reaching out to pick up the hammers before I could. He walked resolutely over to the right side where the largest Bian Zhong were, found the ideogram for Water, and struck it. The deep, hollow, stifled sound reverberated for a long while, but nothing happened.

“Should I hit the five Metal bells now?” Lao Jiang asked.

“Go ahead,” Master Red said. “Do it according to size, from largest to smallest. If that doesn't work, we'll try the other way.”

But nothing happened then either. Nor when he rang the nine Earth, the thirteen Fire, the seventeen Wood, and the twenty-one Water. Just a little while earlier, Lao Jiang had complained of the noise I was making by striking the bells, but now he was having a ball with the hammers: Seeing is believing, after all. The sound didn't bother him in the slightest when he was the one playing. He repeated the series in reverse, but to no effect, so we sat back down on the floor, completely disheartened and partially deaf.